


Miscalculations

by agent85



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3 + 1, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Jemma Needs Hugs, Poor Jemma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent85/pseuds/agent85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, the three times Jemma Simmons realized that she wasn't the problem, and one time she became the solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miscalculations

1.

 

 

The wind whips through her hair as she watches him struggle to open the door. He's too late, though. She took care of that. She takes a moment to smile at him, at the way he still reaches for her even when she is past saving, at the way he calls her name with such desperate affection. She is still smiling when she lets the wind take her.

As she falls, she allows herself to recoil as she remembers the thud of the fire extinguisher against Fitz's neck, and she wishes there had been a better way. She wishes that she didn't have to make that choice for both of them, that she wasn't a time bomb with seconds fading into zeroes. But, in the moments before Ward appears to slow her descent, she is proud of the choice she made. She is destined to fall. And now she knows that they won't fall with her.

(Later, when she's running analysis in a black lab coat, it occurs to her that if she'd waited a full sixty seconds, Fitz would have told her that she didn't have to jump at all.)

 

2.

 

Working at Hydra, she discovers, is actually not that bad. The overall objectives of her research are, of course, horrific, but she is never actually told what those objectives are, and she can easily ignore them. The day-to-day tasks are standard enough that Simmons can forget about the death looming overhead and spend those hours just being a scientist again. There are no failures here. No one is asking for impossible things, or expects her to heal invisible wounds. She does not reach out and injure. He is safe from her now.

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and her sanctuary doesn't fall apart as much as it unravels, thread by thread, until she finds herself falling yet again. This time, though, the falling is the premature end, rather than the beginning of her latest human sacrifice. Even as she is caught once more, she fears Fitz will be the one left broken and bruised by the things she could not do.

(When she finally has the courage to look at his medical records, realizing that he is further away than she ever thought possible, she learns that leaving never helped him. She lies awake at night trying to figure out what the problem was if it wasn't her.)

 

3.

 

She takes a steadying breath before she walks into the lab. The results are due any second now, and Skye is still in danger as long as there is something Simmons doesn't understand. The understanding, of course, is a double-edged sword. She needs to know enough to protect people, yes, but pushing the boundaries of knowledge led to hauling Trip away in fragments. She must learn from her mistakes, so no one else pays the price for her selfishness. She must curb her curiosity to keep Skye solid. 

There is a part of her that mourns the seventeen-year-old and the answers she will never have. But Simmons has to lock those feelings away, because Skye can't see the doubt that festers and weeps. She is in charge, she is responsible, and she needs to tell herself that the data will absolve her friend, because otherwise she will fall to pieces. So she slaps on a smile and tells herself that nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong.

(When her two best friends tell her that she's the monster, not the savior, she waits until she is alone before she lets the tears come. When the door creaks open, she won't let herself know that it's him until his hand is on her shoulder. She curls into him by instinct and feels like she is enough. They were yelling at each other a moment ago, but now she is pulling him closer, grasping him tighter, and something must have broken after all, because some time after the sobbing confessions, her lips find his.)

 

1.

 

He is here, he is here, and he is kissing her back. Her hands find his hair, his find her waist, and he almost drowned once, but now they are drowning in each other. When they gasp for air, she can see that he's just as surprised as she is, but she traces his jawline with her thumb and grins anyway. Knowing the taste of him is having an answer that the seventeen-year-old has been waiting for.

He starts to pull away, stuttering out excuses, but she leaps forward to capture his lips again. She doesn't know why she's doing it, only that she has walked too long in the desert. He pulls away again, this time looking at her in terror, and she has injured him and she's not sure how. She doesn't know what to say, but when he turns to leave, she tells him that she needs him next to her. She tells him that too often she has fallen because she pushed him away. This time, he doesn't push her away, either.

(The next day, when she walks through the halls with his hand in hers, he tells her that he needs her, too. She realizes that she's falling anyway.)


End file.
